TV is normally very poor, in my opinion. As Denmark is a small country there are few national channels, so a lot of the programmes are imported from the US mainly, and a few more from the UK. None of the imported programmes are dubbed, only subtitled, so remain watchable even if you can’t speak Danish.
You will get more choice with Cable and Satellite options. The major providers are TDC (Cable), Viasat and Canal. We are currently with Viasat, who seem to do the best deals right now for those starting up.
The network is all managed by TDC, the Danish national provider, so you will probably come into contact with them especially if you need a new line to your home or an old one reactivated. Brace yourself for the price of activating a line to your home and that’s even if they don’t actually have to visit your house, but once in it all seems to run efficiently.
There are other internet and telecoms providers, and the same as other countries, there are always deals, one of which might be just right for you. I’m with Cybercity as they do unmetered national calls, and for 10kr a month extra really cheap calls abroad, a handy saving for a foreign Contractor who calls abroad a lot – not everyone has Skype, but if they do I prefer Skype and 3 has a Skype deal on their Mobile telephone. But you might prefer TDC since they have a good deal going if you take out their cable TV with Broadband, and that seems to offer the best choice of TV channels here. All comes down to what you want.
For phoning abroad more cheaply you can also buy discount phone cards at places like the post office.
If you’re intending to stay for some time, you can defer taxes by investing in a Pension. Skandiabank’s self select pension scheme impressed me because it has no annual charges other than those of the funds you choose to invest in. Some of the fees on investment funds at High St. banks horrified me, so if you are financially savvy, as a lot of IT Contractors are, you’ll find this a much better deal.
To be honest, the rules for contributing pensions are not that attractive. There are two pension types, and the taxation rules are explained as I understand them.
KapitalPension
Allows you to contribute approx 40,000 krone yearly with a 40% tax break, but you will be charged 40% on the fund value at maturity, as well as 15% tax on the profit!
RatePension
This gives you a tax break at your highest tax rate, but you will also be charged 15% tax on the profit. This pension has more possibilities though, because you then pay income tax on the monthly payout to yourself.
Thus, a common thing for Danes to do is retire to places like Spain so they only pay the 5% national tax rate and avoid the state and kommune taxes since they do not live anywhere in Denmark. The Danish government is trying to clamp down on those retirees who claim to live abroad but still retain a house in Denmark. The possible solution? Tax all retirees living abroad but who retain a holiday home in Denmark as if they were Danish residents…have they forgotten they still squeeze 25% MOMs out of these people whenever they come back?
The obvious solution therefore for people like you or I without strong ties to Denmark is to sell up everything prior to retirement and never come back.
Thanks to high sales taxes on printed paper these things are all very expensive. I recommend you refer to the Ingen MOMs Shopping Portal for the best sites to buy your books from in the UK and subscribe to UK Magazines. These sites do free delivery on books to Denmark so you will be amazed how much you save.
The mortgage market, if you fancy buying a home, is very competitive. Shop around for the best loan, and especially at the moment with the huge housing price boom which is taking place right now I bet you will probably be accepted.
Also, you get 33% tax relief on mortgage interest repayments. Not enough to convince me to sign away all of our house, but you can factor it into your calculations if you need a loan. When you take out a loan you have to pay Stamp duty of 1.5% on the loan value, so a Mortgage should probably be looked at as a long-term commitment.
Incredibly, this 33% tax relief on interest repayments extends to ANY loans you may take out for any purpose. This includes consumer loans to buy a car, new furniture, LCD TV, holidays…you name it.
Thus the incentive to save and invest is lessened still more, and Denmark was recently named by the OECD as one of the five most personally indebted countries in the world, along with the likes of the UK and New Zealand. Could there be a link?
Danes love their mobile phones so the market is very competitive and you have a choice of at least four providers. Deals also vary a lot but there are plenty of adverts to help you make a decision. You’ll probably end up paying about 2-300kr a month and get a phone thrown in.
I’ve been with Sonofon , TDC and 3 and never had problems with any of them.
The Danish language is hard to understand and therefore a struggle. Denmark does theoretically provide free Danish lessons to all who move here. In practice though, you will find that these take place during the day and therefore will not fit in with your need to work as IT Contractor and earn some money. Reading the language isn’t as hard, since the sentence structure is similar to English and some of the words can be pronounced in your head similarly to English equivalents.
I think I have 2 major disadvantages (or excuses) for my struggles to learn the language. The first is that working in IT I tend to have a more logical, linear thinking mind, and the second is that I am scarred by the appalling French lessons I got at my local comprehensive all those years ago. Neither excuse is really valid, I know.
Fortunately, you can get by in English so that’s what I tend to do, or rely on my partner to bail me out…sorry!
You can find an excellent free English-Danish translator here. It even does web pages!
This is available through a number of providers such as TDC and Cybercity via your telephone line and there is now also a company called ClearWire which is implementing a Wimax solution across Denmark. A lot of the larger towns are now covered, and this could be an interesting proposition since if you couple it with IP telephony like Skype you’ll have no need for a fixed line at all. Mobile phone provider 3 (Three) recently started offering Mobile phone internet with a speed up to 1.5MB, which could also be of interest.
A lot of garages and TDC sell mobile internet cards allowing you to connect to their local wireless networks for 1 or 2 hours at a time. This might be an option if you only need occasional access, although it is fairly expensive.
Now for something you really need to be aware of, the world’s tax champions recently changed the rules so that anyone with an internet connection speed of over 256k has to buy a TV licence…which was renamed a “media licence”, even if you don’t actually have or ever watch TV. This new regulation has brought a lot of complaints from foreign students since Denmark also holds the distinction of the world’s most expensive TV licence.
Same as anywhere else, you can rent or buy. A few years ago buying was a fantastic deal, as house prices had not risen to match Danish earnings or house price booms in other parts of Europe, so there has been a major catch-up period with prices rising approximately 25% per year. This boom has been further fueled by low interest rates and financial engineering products such as interest-only loans. Perhaps the bargain in buying is less so now, although the fact that the national newspapers periodically print “house price crash” stories reminds me of Britain circa 2000, so maybe there is still some way to go. It depends on where you work – the big cities will have rental and purchase prices similar to other big cities, but if you happen to be working in a smaller town on Jylland, for example, you can still see decent houses on large plots of land for under 1 million krone.
By the way, you can only buy a house if you’re fully resident here. I think that they worry rich Germans will pop across the border and buy up all the houses as holiday homes, which would then be a problem collecting taxes from people not resident here, so somehow Denmark got special EU exemption.
As for renting, I cannot speak from any personal experience, but I do know that our local newspaper has a full page of rental accomodation each week and I’ve no reason to suspect any different elsewhere. This search engine should prove useful.
When you start up here you will probably have a requirement to transfer money from abroad into your new Danish Krone bank account to get you started. For this purpose I used XE. As they are internet-based you get a much, much closer deal to the real exchange rate than your normal bank will ever give you. I compared HSBC and XE and found I saved over 2% of the total sum being transferred. Highly significant if you’re talking about £1000s of pounds.
I guess the reverse also applies when it’s time to go too.
